The orange tent, which sprawled across a small plateau above the Ecuadorian village of San Bernardo, shone like a bicycle reflector against the dark, two-mile high mountains of the southern Chimborazo Province. The tent seemed out of place—more suitable to a county fair than to a remote Quichua Indian village.

But then, what was going on inside the tent would have been even more conspicuous in San Bernardo less than 15 years ago. On this crisp July evening, more than 800 Quichua Christians, sitting poncho to poncho, young and old, were studying Scripture and singing gospel songs. They had come, seemingly out of nowhere, to this isolated tent for a week-long conference. The San Bernardo church had purchased the colorful canvas from a Texas tentmaker to provide a meeting place large enough for the growing number of area believers.

Pastor Agustín Anilemo organized the conference to develop Christian maturity in his church members. Since becoming the first Christian convert in San Bernardo nine years ago, and then its first pastor, Anilemo has baptized more than 150 new believers.

Ecuadorian field director for Gospel Missionary Union (GMU), Henry Klassen, who brought a generator-powered film projector and a movie about Noah’s ark to the conference, said San Bernardo church members have a great desire to study Scripture. They even want church history and Christian anthropology courses—any kind of biblically-related knowledge “they can get their hands on,” he said.

Less than a generation ago, Saturday night in San Bernardo and other Quichua villages meant marathon drinking sprees. The Quichuas slept late to get sober, not because they had been up past midnight at a gospel songfest (as they were on Saturday night of the tent conference).

But missions work among the Quichuas “really began to take off” during the late 1960s, said Klassen, who, with his wife Pat, has been in Ecuador 26 years. GMU missionary Julia Woodward, who pioneered the Quichua work, left Ecuador in 1953 after 51 years in the field. When she left, it was said she could count the number of converts on one hand.

But Woodward’s patience was to bear phenomenal fruit. Now there are more than 20,000 Quichua Christians in the mountainous Chimborazo province alone, where GMU has its main Quichua work.

Christian and Missionary Alliance workers experienced a similar windfall, but on a smaller scale, in the northern city of Otovalo, where their primary work among the Ecuadorian Quichuas is located. From 1916 to 1969, “the charts never showed more than 28 baptized Quichua believers,” said CMA South American director Dave Volstead. But since 1969, the number of baptized believers has grown to 900, and the number of house churches from 1 to 20. (A number of other denominations and missions groups have varying levels of Quichua ministry.)

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Most Quichua churches function independent of foreign-based mission groups. Quichuas are training their own pastors, financing their own missions projects, and implementing their own Bible study programs.

Recent happenings in the Ecuadorian Quichua church include these activities:

• Quichuan churches contributed more than $3,000 toward the purchase of a new transmitter for radio station HCJB in Quito. Inaugurated in July, the transmitter will be used exclusively for Quichua programming. Dick Farstad, director of the HCJB Quichua service, plans to expand Quichua programming an extra four hours, from 12 to 16 hours daily. This is in response to Quichua demand.

• Quichua Indians in the Chimborazo province are participating in community health projects now being coordinated in Ecuador by several U.S.-based mission agencies. Mañuel Naula, the first Quichua medical doctor and a Christian, works part-time at a hospital near the GMU mission compound in Colta County. He also trains Quichua “health promoters,” who can provide basic medical care in remote villages.

• An average of 160 Quichuas have taken part in GMU Bible Institutes. Participating churchmen study Scripture during concentrated five-day meetings, four times a year, over a four-year period. GMU missionary John Lotzgesell is presently doing exegesis on the translation of the first Quichua Old Testament.

• Forty ordained Quichua pastors are affiliated with GMU, the mission organization with perhaps the most extensive ministry to Quichuas.

What has caused the accelerated acceptance of Christianity among the Ecuadorian Quichuas, particularly those in the Chimborazo Province? While church growth has slowed in recent years, at its peak, whole Quichua families and villages were converting to Christianity.

The answer lies partly in understanding the Quichua society, missions observers say. Quichua-speaking Indians, who number 2 million in Ecuador (more than 14 million total in South America), are direct descendants of the once proud Incas. Spanish conquistadors crushed the Inca empire in 1533, and later exploited the Indian population. As a result, Quichuas historically were regarded as second-class citizens. “Often they were told they didn’t even have a soul,” said Klassen.

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The Quichuas worked on haciendas under the domination of European landlords. Their religion, if any, was syncretistic Roman Catholic. Its trademark was the drinking feast: “The Quichuas literally lived from feast day to feast day,” Klassen observed.

For years, missionaries had trouble cracking the Quichuas’ spiritual barriers. As far as GMU was concerned, its missionaries went through “a lot of soul-searching” because their Quichua ministry seemed ineffective.

A Christian anthropologist during the early 1950s advised missionaries to push social work programs. Other persons said the missionaries should first convert the mestizo (mixed European and Indian ancestry) population, who exercised influence over the Quichuas, being a step higher on the Ecuadorian social ladder.

GMU rejected both of those options, said Klassen: “We felt our time was better spent in trying to teach the Quichuas the basics of the gospel.” At the same time, GMU missionaries analyzed their gospel package: was their message not getting through because of misunderstandings in culture or language?

Klassen listed a number of circumstances that combined to break the missions deadlock. First, land reform legislation in Ecuador broke up the large haciendas and released the Quichuas from domination by the landlords. At the same time as Quichuas gained new personal freedoms, GMU missionaries increasingly treated “Quichuas as Quichuas,”not trying to force Western customs upon the Indians, said Klassen.

GMU also began training Quichua Christians in their own villages, rather than taking them away for study since the Indians often returned “not feeling part of the community anymore.” A greater number of GMU missions workers became fluent in Quichua, said Klassen, and these missionaries adopted the policy of giving Quichua Christians responsibility—“even when others thought the Quichuas weren’t ready for it,” he said.

Opposition from the dominant Roman Catholic Church and non-Christian Quichuas at first slowed church growth. The greatest persecution came from the Quichua canteen owners, who saw their businesses literally going down the drain as more Quichuas became Christians and abandoned the time-honored drinking feasts.

In the village of San Antonio, for example, more than 20 families decided within a matter of weeks to become evangelical Christians. “There was an uproar,” said Klassen, “because the canteen owners there saw that if things continued this way, they soon would be out of business.” In some areas, Quichua believers suffered physical abuse and destruction of property.

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But the persecution subsided as Quichua Christians grew in number. Many Quichua non-Christians took notice that their Christian neighbors had escaped the financial and mental control of alcohol. Often, the Quichua Christians showed greater self-respect. They took greater pride in their work and replaced their mud huts with wood-frame homes.

“The Quichuas showed by their lives that Christianity could work,” said Roberta Hostetler, a GMU practical nurse. When she came to Ecuador in 1962, there were four Quichua churches; now there are more than 180.

Klassen added, “Once the Quichuas see there is a benefit from change, there is a willingness to change.”

The Quichua church, like any other, has its share of problems. A leading pastor recently was disciplined by his church for sexual indiscretions in his family. Quichua church leaders, remembering past domination by Spanish-speaking whites, still avoid active involvement in Ecuadorian church affairs.

Klassen complains about leftist influence in Ecuador, which, he says, makes the Indians more concerned about their material rather than spiritual well-being. Recognizing the Quichuas as a potential political bloc, the Communists beam into Ecuador from Cuban and Soviet transmitters a full schedule of Quichua language programming—news, music, and propaganda—said HCJB’s Farstad.

Klassen also worries about the first wave of second generation Quichua Christians, “who go to high school and there get their faith challenged.… The older folks took their faith at face value.”

But at least at the San Bernardo tent conference, the enthusiastic believers exhibited no problems with their faith. Their gospel music richocheted off the hillsides, and cracked the evening stillness. Young people comprised a large segment of the audience.

And the San Bernardo Quichuas made sure the reporter felt at home, shaking hands and serving him a five-course meal—beginning with soup, and ending with sweetened oatmeal drink. They talked about buying another tent; their 800-capacity model was getting too small.

JOHN MAUST

Zimbabwe: R & R for War Zone Pastors

Amid continuing tension in war-torn Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) more than 250 pastors and church leaders withdrew from their daily work for a one-week retreat at summer’s end.
Their conference, called the National Pastors’ Retreat, was organized by the evangelistic association, African Enterprise, which has branches in many parts of Africa. The theme was the lordship of Christ in the life of the pastor, the church, and the nation.
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Three speakers from outside Zimbabwe spoke on this theme in plenary sessions: John Wilson, a well-known Ugandan evangelist and member of the East Africa team of African Enterprise; Adrio Konig, a white South African professor and head of the department of systematic theology, ethics, and practical theology at the University of Pretoria; and Nigel Walker, minister of Christ Church, an Anglican congregation in Abingdon, England.
Local speakers conducted workshops on various aspects of Christian work: Pius Wakatama, director of Chiedza Communications and chairman of African Enterprise in Zimbabwe, on communicating Christ to the unconverted; Bishop Peter Hatendi of the Anglican Church, on family life; and Bishop Shiri of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and Roy Comrie, a missionary with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, on the role of the missionary in Zimbabwe.
Towards the end of the retreat, the conference executive committee drafted a letter to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, expressing their appreciation for her efforts to help reach a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia conflict. They wrote that Christians would pray for her during the all-party constitutional conference in London, and indicated their desire to see the Lord’s will done during the face-to-face negotiations.
When the committee read the letter to the conference delegates for their approval, some voiced disagreement. These delegates felt that letters should also be sent to the major political leaders. Others felt that guerrilla leaders might misconstrue the meaning of the letter and turn their anger upon the church. Because of these disagreements, the committee decided to scrap the letter, and no resolution of any kind was issued by the pastors.
The Zimbabwe pastors appeared to need a time of retreat. The escalating war has pushed them to cope with multiplied problems in their ministries. In fact, 50 pastors who had preregistered did not attend because of the war situation. Delegates from Shabani stayed home because that week seven people were murdered by a gang of terrorists. The pastors had to bury the dead, comfort their families, and make plans for the orphans left behind.
Chris Sewel, leader of the African Enterprise team that organized and sponsored the retreat, felt it had served its purpose: “This retreat helped pastors. Most of them were caught up with the problems and tensions of their churches and communities. They had a chance to get away and focus again on the person of Jesus.
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The Church Of England
Anglican Choice: An Essentially Nonreligious’ Archbishop

What is to be expected from the man chosen to succeed Donald Coggan as primate of the Church of England?CHRISTIANITY TODAYasked David Coomes, editor of the Church of England Newspaper, to provide its readers with his personal assessment:

The Crown Appointment Commission’s choice of successor to Donald Coggan as archbishop of Canterbury should have surprised no one. It reflected the makeup within the 16-member commission itself: drawn strongly from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. The next archbishop, Robert Runcie, 57, at present bishop of St. Albans, describes himself as a “radical Catholic,” meaning that he is not part of the evangelical wing but is a traditionalist who is open to change.

Trevor Beeson of Westminster Abbey observed that the commission had chosen “the best of a mediocre bunch,” which was not really fair, as the “bunch” included Stewart Blanche, archbishop of York, a decidedly able man.

Evangelicals are not bubbling with enthusiasm either. They forsee, and regret, an inevitable change in emphasis and direction. It was possible to see an intended criticism of his evangelical predecessor when Bishop Runcie told the press that “the hollowness of reading declarations and general moralizing divorced from a direct experience of the doubts and difficulties of ordinary people is only too evident.”

Some evangelicals, who prayed long and hard that God’s will be done, are now complaining that the wrong man—that is, the man they themselves would not have chosen—has been given the job.

But while these evangelicals may be unduly concerned with the next archbishop’s churchmanship, they certainly should be concerned with his stand on the eternal and irreducible truth in which the church is supposed to believe. It is reported that so far Runcie has enunciated the truth about Jesus Christ and the Scriptures.

Many issues on which an archbishop should speak and provide leadership are, of course, complex and open to more than one conclusion.

So where does he stand on crucial issues facing the church today? He refuses to state his position on homosexuality, preferring to wait for the publication of the eagerly awaited Anglican Report. He has nothing definite to say on abortion, either, feeling that he needs to seek advice before he can comment with conviction. He wishes to pursue church unity between Anglicans, Catholics, and Orthodox churches—and for this very reason, opposes the ordination of women.

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On marriage and divorce he is keen to stress the traditional stand of the church to recognize, teach, and support marriage as a life-long relationship. But he does feel that a Christian jurisdiction should have forgiveness and renewal built into it, so that there should be provisions to marry some divorced people in church.

“The church that spends too much of its time firming up the center and tightening up pastoral regulations for font and altar will not necessarily become more Christian at heart,” he says. “It might become pharisaic.”

There is nothing here to put to rest the fear that the next archbishop—unlike Coggan—sees the Church of England facing a series of battles, whether they be moral or practical, whereas the church above all else faces one battle—and that is intensely spiritual.

Bishop Runcie, however, has made clear his own priorities: “In keeping the church true to the gospel there are dangers on two fronts,” he said. “There are signs that a ghetto-minded church may be emerging. There are contrary signs of the emergence of a church that is just an echo of fashionable trends. Both these must be resisted.

“The church is already too easy to ignore, too much on the periphery. It needs to turn its back on the ghetto. Helping to keep the church mindful of the gospel, faithful to Christ, and in touch with the world of ordinary people—that should be the first concern of any archbishop.”

Bishop Runcie’s background is essentially nonreligious: his father was a lapsed Presbyterian, and he was baptized into the Church of England only because his mother thought “she ought to have him done.” His religious upbringing consisted of two Sunday school lessons at the Methodist church; even his subsequent confirmation at Merchant Taylors’ School in Liverpool was principally to please a fellow pupil.

During the war he was a troop leader, reaching the rank of captain in a tank battalion of the Scots guards; he won his Military Cross on the Rhine in 1945 for pulling a soldier from a burning tank under fire. He returned to his interrupted studies at Oxford in literature and the humanities and, he has said, only in the final term did he decide to enter the ministry. Most of his career, since his 1951 ordination, has been in theological education.

Runcie will succeed Archbishop Coggan (who is 70 this month) when he retires on January 25, the fifth anniversary of his enthronement at Canterbury. Coggan may not have been the most exciting archbishop, but he has been conscientious, creative, and widely traveled. At very least, his clearly defined and unshakable faith has helped the Church of England recover its nerve. Many Anglican clergy, however, remain confused about their roles and their status. It is possible that Runcie’s long experience in education will help here.

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One newspaper’s church correspondent wrote: “In a period of secular skepticism the people of England may just be prepared to respond anew to a primate who keeps pigs and who attended the local council school.” Actually, the people of England care little about the Archbishop of Canterbury—who he is or where he comes from; they care still less about his pigs. But they may just be prepared to respond anew to a primate who knows what he believes, is not afraid to say it clearly, and unequivocally, and is unswerving in his devotion to Christ and the Scripture.

Disasters
Although Structures Give Way, the Living Church Extends Its Hand

Church buildings proved to be an uncertain sanctuary as David turned into a Goliath and lashed across the Dominican Republic early last month.

Twenty-two persons who huddled in a small concrete block church on a hill in the city of San Cristóbal were among the hurricane’s first victims on the island of Hispaniola (which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti). “The zinc on the rooftop went first, then the wooden section,” reported a horrorstruck eyewitness, who lost a son and a brother when walls collapsed on those clustered inside.

Then disaster struck some 480 Dominicans. They had sought shelter in a larger Roman Catholic church in the tiny mountain town of Padre las Casas, only to have the overflowing Yaque River abruptly change its course and sweep through the church. The waters rose so rapidly that only about 80 persons, many of whom had climbed to the top of the steeple before the structure was swept downstream, avoided drowning.

Together, the two tragedies accounted for more than half of the country’s known fatalities during the first week of grim disaster reporting. The toll continued to climb, however, and revealed at least 1,000 dead and an estimated 150,000 homeless.

Also devastated was the tiny banana-growing island of Dominica, where 22 were reported dead, and the capital city of Roseau was virtually leveled, along with nearly all the banana trees. Prime Minister Oliver Seraphin ordered government buildings, schools, and churches opened to an estimated 60,000 persons whose flimsy, wooden homes were destroyed by the hurricane.

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(The Christian Medical Society center on the island, designed to house 50, and badly damaged, was nevertheless sheltering about 300.)

Evangelical churches quickly were transformed into distribution centers for food, medicines, and building materials in areas sure to be without power, communications, and passable roads.

Six church groupings are sharing responsibility for distribution: Free Methodists, Missionary Church, Evangelical Mennonites, Templo Biblico (Brethren), Alianza Biblica Christiana (Unevangelized Fields Mission-related), and Templo Evangelicos (Worldteam-related). Worldteam’s Dan Wiebe is interagency relief coordinator on the scene.

In Miami, Florida, Worldteam’s office became the liaison for eight agencies that quickly formed a coordinating committee. The charter planners: Campus Crusade for Christ, Christian Medical Society, Christian Aviation Fellowship (formerly Christian Pilots Association), Food for the Hungry, International Crusades (formerly Literature Crusades), World Relief (of NAE), World Vision, and Worldteam. Geoff Tunnicliffe of International Crusades, a trained administrator, is coordinating operations in North America.

The first relief flight, on a Jungle Aviation and Radio Service DC-3, left September 13 with 8,000 pounds of staple foods. A ship cargo was dispatched from New Orleans at about the same time—85,000 pounds of foodstuff from Food for the Hungry stocks.

The quick merging of disaster assessments into one cohesive picture, the setting of complementary plans, and the establishment at the outset of a coordinating structure were encouraging signs that evangelical relief efforts are coming of age.

World Scene

Ten thousand Bibles have been shipped to Cuba with government approval. The Ecumenical Council of Cuba is importing the United Bible Societies’ modern Spanish-language version entitled Dios Habla Hoy (“God Speaks Today”) from the UBS regional center in Mexico City. This is the fifth import of Scriptures permitted since the Cuban Bible Society was closed in 1968.

Argentina has implemented a law requiring denominations and religious organizations to register and be officially recognized. As decreed by the military junta, the measure appears targeted at smaller, newer, and less orthodox denominations and cults. (Groups already banned include the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishna, Divine Light, and the Children of God.) Roman Catholicism, the nation’s majority religion, is exempted. Enacted in February 1978, and effective last month, the law gives religious groups 90 days to furnish the National Bureau of Religions with information including: a summary of doctrine, a schedule of regular activities, a description of ties and dependence on other institutions inside the country and abroad, and the approximate number of adherents in Argentina.

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The Church of England’s General Synod declined to reconfirm its loyalty and commitment to the World Council of Churches in a session held last summer. Instead, by a vote of 149 to 136, the synod merely commended for study in the churches the report of a church delegation that earlier went to WCC headquarters in Geneva to discuss the controversial grant to the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front by the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism.

Lutheran pastors in both East and West Germany last month read a joint statement in all their churches. The pastoral statement, issued on the fortieth anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, confessed to a common German guilt for the start of World War II. The statement was the first common action of the two bodies since 1968, when passage of a new constitution in the German Democratic Republic prohibited East German participation in a common grouping with West German counterparts.

Italian Protestants are worried about trends under the new Pope. The Protestants always have been sensitive to the overwhelming Roman Catholic dominance within the country, but relationships improved dramatically under the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI. Under John Paul II, however, according to an article in the British Weekly and Christian World, Protestants sense “a cooling off of ecumenical relations” and “increased influence of those who oppose ecumenism in the Italian context, and who want to uphold and increase the special powers and distinctive privileges of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, to the detriment of the other churches.” In reaction, Protestants are launching their own news agency, starting religious television, and stepping up their radio outreach. They hope to increase the gospel proclamation to their fellow Italians and to voice the Protestant viewpoint.

Soviet Pentecostals founded an underground central church council recently during an illegal meeting in a forest outside Moscow. Their action may indicate growing militancy among the approximately half million Soviet Pentecostals, many of whom—perhaps 200,000—refuse to join the officially tolerated All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. The purposes of the new council, according to one delegate to the meeting, are to unite the Pentecostals in resisting what they call man-made laws that go against their beliefs and to mobilize support for the 30,000 or so Pentecostals who want to emigrate.

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Nigeria’s Evangelical Churches of West Africa (ECWA) added 138 married couples to its missionary force this past summer—104 of them new graduates of ECWA Bible schools. The remaining 34 couples were pastors and their wives released and sent by their congregations for one year of missionary service in a campaign to evangelize all of Nigeria. Nigerian contributions to the Evangelical Missionary Society (the missions arm of the Sudan Interior Mission-related denomination) during 1978 totaled nearly $250,000.

The Lutheran World Federation’s plans to establish a major African radio ministry on a broad ecumenical basis received a setback. The World Association for Christian Communications, which had tentatively agreed to a partnership in new radio services from Sierra Leone and the Seychelles Islands, has reconsidered and rejected participation. The African region of the WACC decided that transnational broadcasting facilities were less likely to be “truly African” than localized outlets. The Lutheran federation wants to create an alternative to its former Radio Voice of the Gospel facility in Ethiopia, which was nationalized in 1977.

Ethiopian Mennonites may send their pastoral students to the Soviet Union instead of North America. Leaders of the Meserete Kristos Mennonite Conference reported during a recent visit to Dutch Mennonites that students sent into the affluent Western culture had become confused and uprooted. They plan to send their future pastors to a soon-to-be-opened Baptist seminary in Moscow, where they expect less harmful effects from the simpler Russian lifestyle.

The home of the Anglican bishop in Iran was ransacked by raiders this past summer, according to reports reaching the Church Missionary Society in London. Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was absent at the time, but church documents and personal papers were removed from his Isfahan home and burned. Episcopal hospitals were seized earlier without any offer of compensation. Dehqani-Tafti has made a strong protest to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolutionary Council—so far without result.

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India’s controversial anticonversion bill is now dead according to government sources. Vigorous protests, both in India and from abroad, along with the recent change of government were responsible for its defeat.

The Chinese government has approved publication of the Bible in the Chinese language for the first time since the 1949 Communist revolution. Yin Ziehzeng, pastor of Peking’s only Protestant church, last month announced that a government publishing house would print the revised version in the simplified Chinese characters adopted by the government in the 1950s to increase literacy. Yin said he hopes at least 100,000 copies will be printed.

Taiwan is preparing legislation that would require church services to be conducted in the official Mandarin Chinese language of the mainland minority. Persons who do not speak Mandarin would be permitted to speak in another dialect or language so long as it is interpreted into Mandarin; 85 percent of the population speaks Taiwanese. The proposed regulations would also give the government power to nullify church actions regarded as detrimental to state interests and to order churches to reorganize. The legislation has been sent from Taiwan’s executive branch to the legislature for ratification.

Church leaders in Korea have declared that “the Unification Church is not a sect of the Christian Church.” The statement, which lists 16 reasons why Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Movement is unchristian, was signed last May by representatives of 19 major denominations in Korea. The document asserts that this unbiblical movement “sneaked into the hearts of those who were very much in depression, uncertainty, and fear during and after the Korean War.”

A unit of the Australian Presbyterian Church has voted to withdraw from the World Council of Churches. The action of the Queensland General Assembly of the church was taken without dissent, citing as reason the WCC’s support of revolutionary groups in Southern Africa.

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